by Amy Simone
“Damn bastard,” she thought, as she scurried towards a patio door and into the night. None of them saw her, except Pretty Boy at the end. She had about a foot to go to get to the door and the cat jumped off of Ralph’s crotch, using his claws to propel himself into the air.
“Yow!” Ralph yelled.
The cat almost made it to swat at Cassie but she sped through a spot she could detect in the track that was just big enough to allow her to slide out. Now on the outside of the glass, Cassie turned back and looked at the scene. Ralph was holding his penis. Susan was gripping her cat by the scruff of his neck and scolding him. Then glories of glories, Ralph reached for his glass and downed the brandy.
15
To Work to Work We Go
Before she left to meet Annie the next day, Cassie rose early and mowed half the large front yard. The grass was almost a foot high. Ralph usually did this or got one of his kennel help to do it. His mind hadn’t been on yard work lately. She felt overwhelmed. The Louisiana humidity didn’t help either. If she had to keep all this up herself, it would take a lot out of her. Sometimes the pump broke. Ralph had never shown her how he patched it together to make it work. Then there was the matter of the garbage canisters. Trash pick up was tomorrow. That was something else Ralph used to do. He also got on the roof and would at least nail down a loose shingle. When she took her car to the shop, he’d at least follow her and bring her back to the house. Cassie figured all the things she’d have to manage if she would stay there alone.
So far he and she had not decided who would keep paying for what. Her nerves got the better of her. After she took a shower, in a moment of weakness, she called Hayworth and finally admitted to her mom the reality of her failed marriage.
“I never really liked him,” Hayworth said after Cassie got done.
Cassie heard her take a drag from her ubiquitous cigarette.
“Mother!”
“He was always so self-absorbed. I know you thought he’d give you a nice home and make a lot of money but it sounds like he’s footloose and fancy free now, doesn’t it?” She sighed.
“I need to ask you a favor…” Cassie paused, scared. “If I can’t make a go of it here, can we move in with you?”
Hayworth said nothing.
“Mother?”
“I have some news,” her mother said. “I was waiting to tell you and Catherine but now is as good a time as any. Frank and I are getting married.”
“That’s great, mom!”
“Hold on. There’s more,” Hayworth said. “He’s retiring and I’m selling this place and moving up to Colorado to his cabin.”
“Colorado? Wow!”
“He asked me last week. I meet with the realtor in a few days.”
“Okay, so forget I asked.”
“I’m sorry, Cassie. If you need me to watch the kids while you look for work, I can do that.”
“Who said I was looking for a job?”
“Catherine.”
“I guess that’s because she wants me to start job hunting.”
Hayworth took a drag, then expelled some air. “Yes, darling. She’s worried about you.”
“How can I work when I have Josh here?”
Hayworth remained quiet. “Maybe start one of those cooperative baby-sitting things?” Suddenly she brightened up. “I’m getting you a surprise. You don’t have to use it unless you want to.”
“What is it, mom?”
“Wait. It’ll show up in your in box.”
“A lawyer referral?” she guessed.
“No dear. Not a lawyer. Maybe you and Ralph can work things out without all that. I think he’d be a fool to fight with you on much of anything—especially child support.”
Cassie’s eyes welled up. Her new status was so fresh she hadn’t had time to digest how serious it was, really. “I’ve got to go, mom.”
“Keep me posted.”
Cassie purposely left her laptop in her car when she visited Annie.
“Good morning!” Annie eyed her up and down. Cassie let Josh enter first. “Where’s your computer?” Annie asked her suspiciously.
“Let’s just use yours.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Annie insisted. “I think yours is so much better. It’s faster, more exciting and I just love what it did for my skin last time!”
Cassie looked closely at Annie’s face. She looked younger, all right. Something had changed. Briefly in the back of her mind, Cassie wondered why she hadn’t experienced such benefits herself.
Annie walked to her shop’s front door, opened it, and ushered Cassie and Josh back outside. “Remember, we will all have lunch afterwards,” she said offering a soft bribe.
Reluctantly Cassie walked back out to her car and retrieved her large computer bag.
“That’s a girl,” Annie purred. Then she looked up and down the sidewalk, hung up a “Closed Sign” and locked the door behind them.
“What are you doing?”
“Come on to the back,” Annie told her. “We can sit more comfortably back there.”
Cassie resented how Annie assumed all this would work out just fine for her. So far Cassie never knew what to expect when she opened up her computer. Meeting all the strange characters in the library did nothing to make her feel more confident about the process either. In particular, she never wanted to see Leroy the force field or whatever it was nor the witchy woman ever again. She wondered if her computer might lead her to them.
Annie was acting like a druggie jonesing for a hit.
“Here, have a chair.” She offered a space in front of her desk, dramatically clearing off all the papers off of her desk. It embarrassed Cassie.
“Annie, this thing—whatever it is—is very uncertain. There are no guarantees.”
Annie grinned. “You’re the whiz bang kid…”
Cassie kept the lid closed. She turned and stared at Annie who sat next to her, tipped forward, eager to look at the screen.
“What is it exactly that you think will happen?” Cassie asked.
“First, I need to thank you. The other day? That changed my life. Greg’s too.”
“How?”
“It just did. I feel like I can handle anything. Greg is so happy.”
“That’s good.”
“He wants a full report after today.”
Cassie left the lid down. “What if nothing happens?”
Annie let loose a peal of laughter. Josh who was playing with some magazines that Annie had given him to look at, jerked up his head. The sound startled him.
“Something will happen. I just know it. Why the fear? Let’s get down to business.”
Annie lifted one of her bony hands, covered in diamond rings, and before Cassie could object had flipped the lid back.
The violet light consumed the screen then spread over the shop.
“Damn it, Annie!” Cassie cried.
The light on the desk flickered on and off, as did the fluorescent light in the ceiling. Cassie recalled later looking at the other woman’s face, now bathed in the strange color. She wondered what she looked like too at that moment. Then the flash happened, and darkness.
16
Jungle Action
The two women were now high in some tower type structure and Cassie could see it had a thatched roof because of reeds overhanging. They wore safari type clothes.
“Me Jane,” Annie joked.
Below them stretched the tops of lush vegetation, perhaps a rain forest. It looked like a scene out of Jurassic Park, dotted with what looked to be these insanely tall Hawaiian fire tower type structures. The green of the treetops had an artificial neon cast.
“What the hell are we doing here?” Cassie asked.
“This is it!” Annie told her. “My dream vacation.”
“But didn’t you want your husband with you?”
“He’ll show up later,” Annie assured her.
Cassie poked her head out of the full open slots that made the windows. If she wanted to, she
could have jumped out but from what she could tell, it looked like they were easily 500 feet or more above the ground.
“Annie, you need to tell me more. What else did you envision?” she asked nervously.
Annie didn’t answer her. She was leaning out, too, admiring the view. “Oh look, I see snow over there. Mountains even!” She pointed. “The sky! Look! I can make it pink!”
Cassie shot another glance outside and saw that the entire expanse above them now was a brilliant deep pink with purple clouds.
“Fine. But tell me what else was on your mind?”
They heard somebody making scrapping noises from under their feet on the wooden floor. A flap door swung open. Cassie was glad to realize it was the Coach climbing up and into the hut.
“Coach, you got to help us,” Cassie pleaded.
He smiled but didn’t speak.
“Who is this? Annie asked surprised.
“The Coach. A mentor of sorts,” Cassie explained. “What do you want us to do?” she asked him.
“The first thing is do not go down to the ground,” he said. “Or you’ll be sorry.”
“Why?” Cassie asked, growing more frantic.
“Your friend has too vivid of an imagination. I fear she has repressed too much and saved it all for now.” He frowned.
“Oh jeez,” Cassie moaned. “What’s down there?”
“Let me put it this way,” he began, “everything that normally is inanimate is alive and everything you customarily think of as alive is dead.”
“Huh?” Cassie gasped.
Annie smiled weakly. “Too many years being a shopkeeper, I guess.”
“Tell me what you mean,” Cassie beseeched the Coach.
“I saw coffee cups clattering around on their rims and houses talking to one another yet dogs, cats, humans were stone statues. There were pairs of panty hose running down the street and cars gathered in secret meetings then zooming off to god-knows-where. No driver.”
Cassie had heard enough. “We need to leave. Get us out of here,” she told the Coach.
He shook his head. “There is some reason for it, though. I can’t just lift you out.”
Annie stood nearby, smiling mischievously.
Cassie lashed into her. “What’s so funny? You think this is funny! Life is not some cartoon! I got kids, for Christ’s sake!”
“It makes me feel so young,” Annie squealed. “I’m free, I’m free.”
“Coach! Shut her up! She’s creeping me out.”
He swirled his hands outside of his white robe. The movements reminded Cassie of tai chi moves. Using a ball of yellow light much like the same light he used on Cassie once before he tossed it in Annie’s direction before she could object. The yellow enveloped her much like a cocoon. Annie’s mouth was still moving but neither the Coach nor Cassie could hear her anymore.
“Thank you,” Cassie said to him. “This is not where I want to be.”
“She has some issues,” the Coach agreed.
Cassie leaned out and looked down at the earth. “Oh, I don‘t want to become stone!”
“We may have to fly you two out of here then,” he explained. “Let me think.” Annie now pounded on her soft trap. She wanted out.
“I don’t understand. Why can’t you just zap us home?” Cassie asked.
“Your friend took over. It makes things more, shall we say—delicate,” he explained.
Cassie cleared her throat. “We may have another complication. She said something about her husband joining us later.”
The Coach nodded his head gravely. “Don’t like the sound of all that.” He stuck his head out of the hut now too and looked all about.
“Here’s what we will do—a zipline. There are other towers.”
Cassie waited while he constructed a quick convoluted segments of lines. Once again, he used the strange yellow light to tag a beam of light, anchoring it from one tower to the next.
After he ducked back through a window, she had to ask: “Where are we going to end up?”
“Where you two need to end up—at the end of her imagination.”
“Oh, I see,” Cassie said, although she really didn’t. “Show me, would you?”
He took her arm and directed her to look out, then pointed. “See that line there, off in the distance?”
Cassie had to squint. “Yes.”
“She hasn’t had time to construct anything past that. That will be our aim. Once I get you there, then the system can cut you loose.”
“System?”
“Yes, system.”
“Hey, Coach, at the library, I got this strange note on my car. I memorized it, actually. Somebody wanted me to call them at a strange number and it had all these symbols in it.”
The Coach stood bolt upright. “Did you do it?” he asked in alarm.
“How could I?”
Immediately he softened. “That probably would have taken you to a dark portal. We call them dead ends.”
“Really?”
“Really. Never respond to that thing. It was Leroy or one of those other lost souls stuck in a tragic book. Be careful.”
“Oh great. Now you tell me.”
“My dear, there’s a lot you need to learn.”
They heard an agitated thumping behind them. Annie had rolled her cocoon onto the floor.
“I will hook her up first,” the Coach told Cassie. “You follow. Whatever you do, don’t let get of any handles. Hold on tight. It will be rough and fast.”
The entire hut began violently sway back and forth as if an earthquake had gotten hold.
“I bet that’s the husband. He must be shaking your computer. Let’s go. Hurry!” The Coach attached Annie’s cocoon to the zipline, then offered his hand to Cassie.
“Stand on this and hold here,” he explained.
“Wait, Coach. What am I to do about her once I get back?” Cassie could see that Annie was already sliding far along the line at breakneck speed.
“She’s your friend. Decide. Just no more trouble like this, okay?”
“Thanks a lot,” Cassie said, then her head slightly snapped back as the Coach gave her one final huge shove.
The wind whistled in her ears. Cassie wanted to close her eyes but figured that if she died while doing this she would hate for her last memory to be darkness. She kept her eyes open and looked all around. If this was Annie’s dream vacation, she thought, she could do much better. If only she could figure out how to harness this new computer travel feature. It seemed so unpredictable.
Zap! They were back, sitting at Annie’s desk as quiet and mum as two church mice. However, standing near the desk was an older man dressed in a suit.
“Greg!” Annie exclaimed, “did you catch any of it?”
“No,” he told her.
Annie gestured towards her husband. “Cassie, meet my Greg.” Then she leaned over towards Cassie and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “We taped this.”
Greg grumbled. “Not much to see. Just the two of you sitting here.”
Cassie glanced over to the corner to make sure Josh was doing okay. He was unperturbed. Instead, he had a pair of paper scissors and was now cutting up the magazines into huge pieces. As long as Josh was okay, all was right with the world.
17
Negotiations Wanted
“Tell me what you all did this time,” Greg urged. He reached for Cassie’s laptop.
She grabbed it, shut it and clamped it up into its satchel which she then slung up onto her shoulder.
“We got to go to Paradise,” Annie cooed. “Until this funny little man showed up and put me inside a cage.”
“What! Why?”
“Greg, there’s a lot to all this,” Cassie said. “I don’t understand it.”
“I want a patent on it,” Greg said. Cassie stared at him. He distinguished looking, what many women would call a silver fox . She could easily see how he and Annie had gotten together.
“Look, you seem like a nice man and you h
ave a nice wife. You all don’t want to get tangled up in whatever this is. Besides, I don’t think that’s possible.” Cassie rose to leave.
“Not so fast,” Greg told her. “If it did this much good to Annie as I already have witnessed, there must be something we can market. The Fountain of Youth and all that… take the trip of your dreams… the possibilities are endless.”
Annie still looked perky. “All I know is I want to go again,” she breathed, then gently took his hand. “Greg, there must be a way to convince her.”
Cassie griped the computer even tighter under her arm. “Maybe another time. I need to go.”
Cassie quickly gathered up her son’s paper mess and tossed it into a wastebasket.
“Sorry about your magazines.”
Annie chuckled. “I never look at them, anyway. You sure you don’t want to stay and go to lunch with us?”
“I better get on with some chores,” Cassie admitted. “Thanks anyway.”
Greg broke off from Annie, stood in Cassie’s way for a moment too long, then gave way. She let herself out of the store.
She drove back to her house. It seemed so desolate now that she only had the residuals to ship out and the storage shed was empty. The front yard looked ridiculous with only half of it mowed down. After she fed Josh she finished the other half of the yard. While drinking a glass of tea and waiting on Caleb’s bus to bring him home, she sat down and made a list. Not necessarily in this order, but what she knew she wanted to achieve was: money, an easier place to live, her sons’ health and happiness, and maybe a new un-possessed computer. She yearned for the days in which she could just use her computer without all the strange goings on. Maybe she needed to go back to the library and use their computers.
A shiver came over her. What if all those book creatures came out again?
It bothered her that her sister had revealed to her mother about her marriage difficulties but she figured if something turned the tables, she might have done the same thing. Catherine and Hayworth always were closer than she was to her mother.